Search Engine Marketing & Website Optimization

My responsibilities as webmaster of an ecommerce retail site served as my background in SEM / Optimization. My hours of research and attendance at Search Engine Strategies & WebmasterWorld conferences in Boston and elsewhere paid off and the site still ranks very competitively for several search terms.

Example search results: Pages from this site rank top ten for queries like "Boston Web Design Jobs", "Boston Web Directory", and semantically similar search terms. (Contact me for other specific examples of search results)

I've applied my search engine optimization skills on select projects, working with design and development staff to establish SEO best practices, and did a recent stint as an SEO Specialist north of Boston. I'm now selectively seeking a limited number of SEO clients in Massachusetts.

SEM Services You Can Expect

This list provides an overview of search engine marketing services that will be delivered.

Initial SEO needs assessment: I will research current search engine results for current target search terms and evaluate, in order of priority, what methods will provide improvement.

On-page factors: I will edit unique titles and meta-description tags for each page check/improve page structure for heading tags, paragraphs, and lists. I'll also optimize pages for crawling by converting inline HTML tags to CSS*, externalize javascript, and check for instances of text-as-graphics (images for navigation, etc.).

On-site factors: I will inspect site structure and navigation to ensure that all categories and subcategories can be crawled effectively. This also includes checking the anchor text used for internal links. I will also check for basic canonical URL / duplicate content issues, the spider-friendliness of dynamic URLs, and the presence of, or validity of, the robots.txt file.

Pay-per-click campaign management: A PPC campaign, like Google AdWords®, is a good method to gain traffic while optimization for organic search ranking is underway. It is also an excellent resource for key word research. My experience includes: including "long tail" terms; use of negative keywords, phrase match & exact match to exclude non-qualified traffic; testing multiple ads for keywords; use of dynamic ad titles when appropriate; and writing compelling ad copy within AdWords limits.

Long-term success in search engine ranking entails ongoing efforts and my services provide a good alternative for businesses to the investment of hiring an in-house SEO Specialist or retaining a large SEO firm.

*Is HTML / CSS Important in Search Engine Optimization?

A website's underlying code, unless it is horribly broken, won't in itself make or break its performance in search engine results. It is a case, however, where individual factors contribute to the whole. Clean, valid HTML markup with attributes controlled by CSS assures two things:
1) The site's content will get crawled without interference. And 2) Each page will have a more favorable text-to-code ratio. SEO is an area where you want to gain every possible advantage so my answer is "Yes".